On a Mission
by incrediblegirl24
Summary: AU, Jeanine never gets the serum that enslaves the Dauntless, Tris and crew continue to live their lives as normal. Al is still dead, but everybody else is alive (otherwise I wouldn't have anything to write about)
1. Choosing Day

The Dauntless play the Choosing Ceremony live on the giant screen in the cafeteria. It's Erudite's turn to host the ceremony this year, but Jeanine isn't the one standing behind the bowls. Instead it's a man wearing a blue shirt and a darker blue tie.

I don't know him, but I know the speech he's going to give will be just like all the other Choosing speeches I've heard. Instead of listening to it, I scan the crowd of soon-to-be faction initiates. I recognize most of the Abnegation and a few of the Dauntless. One girl stands out; I can't pick out her faction. She's wearing a gray shirt that's huge on her, obviously Abnegation expect that it shows far too much skin. Her pants are black, they could be Dauntless or Candor. She doesn't have any tattoos or piercings that I can see, although that isn't too strange for the younger Dauntless, but she doesn't have extremely short spiky hair that some girls sport here. Finally, I notice that she has a piece of blue cloth tied around one wrist. Eurdite rules say they only need one piece of blue clothing, but she's pushing the limit on that rule. Most of them go with head-to-toe blue.

The camera focuses on the bowls for a moment before panning around to the initiates again. I don't even remember a camera at the Ceremony last year, but I was so lost and confused the building could have caught on fire and I would have just kept on staring at that light. That's what the possibly Eurdite girl is doing now: staring blankly at the wall opposite her as if she'll vomit if she moves or even glances at something else. A weird sense of certainty fills me.

Behind me, Bud is shouting out "First jumper, place your bets!"

I turn to walk out of the room, and I stop. He grins up at me and says, last year you lost a lot of people a lot of money. I grin at him, and I cockily say, "60 credits on her to jump first". I point.

"She hasn't even picked yet, Tris."

"I know," and I walk away, heading to the net.

Tobias is already there, standing with Lauren and Zeke. Uriah went to the ceremony, so he'll be among the crowd that brings the new Dauntless in. Zeke grins at me, "Did you get your bets in on the first jumper?" He's joking, he probably thinks the Stiff in me would prevent me from betting.

"I did," I say. Tobias wraps his arm around me while Zeke splutters.

"Four, you're a bad influence on this girl," he announces finally.

I'm still the only person who calls him Tobias, and then only in private. He kisses me on the cheek and says, "I don't know, Six can be bad all by herself."

"Cheesey," I tell him. But I kiss him back. Lauren chimes in, "Who'd you put your money on? Another Abnegation transfer? They aren't all like you, you know." Lauren speaks her mind so bluntly that I have no trouble picturing her in Candor black and white.

"An Eurdite. I think."

"You think?" her voice is incredulous.

"You'll see what I mean when she jumps," Zeke gives me a questioning look, but I just smile. Dauntless energy is filling the compound this morning, and Dauntless cockiness is filling me. Out of the corner of my eye I see Christina and Will wander in holding hands. Christina's other hand is holding a bottle of beer.

They join our little circle just in time to hear Lauren say, "I hope it's a Dauntless-born this year. The first jumper hasn't been since our initiate class."

Zeke rolls his eyes, "It was her. She's trying to brag, but she's not doing it right."

Christina laughs a little louder than usual, and Tobias frowns. "Christina, it's not even noon yet. How many have you had?"

Will smiles, "Don't worry, it's only her second. She just a lightweight."

"I am," Christina agrees happily, "But at least I'm not as bad as Tris."

"Six. Remember, she's Six to the newbies," Lauren points out.

"Ooookay," Christina draws out slowly. "I'll remember."

The hallway around us fills up with nearly all of the Dauntless who didn't go into the city. The ceremony must be over.

"New initiates inbound in fifteen minutes," shouts an older man I only vaguely recognize as the guy who sharpens knives in the Pit. We had to haul all of the training knives to him last week because Eric felt they weren't lethal enough.

We stand and talk for the next fifteen minutes, until the train thunders by overhead. Four and Lauren move to the net to help the initiates off, and the chamber goes quiet enough to hear Max's voice. At this distance his words aren't clear, but everyone holds their breath when he finishes.

Christina bounces on the balls of her feet next to me and we wait. After what might have been twelve seconds or twelve hours a grayish blur suddenly hits the net. I can see from this angle how close the net sags to the ground when someone jumps, and my heart hammers. Tobias leans over to the blur, that I can now recognize as the girl I bet on, and pulls her onto her feet on the platform. I see him ask for her name, and she gives it without hesitation.

"First jumper: Kylie!"

We all cheer and clap and stomp our feet. I like her already, this girl.

Once all of the initiates have jumped, some of the older members take the leap too. The Dauntless idea of fun still hasn't ceased to amaze me.

Lunch finds Will and I nearly dragging an inebriated Christina to a table in the cafeteria. "I'll get her get something to soak up the booze, and then you and I can go, okay?" Will asks.

I nod. Christina giggles in my ear, "I hate to see him go, but I looooove to watch him leave." She's openly ogling Will, and I blush. Once a Stiff, always a Stiff apparently. "Will is really great," she says. When she doesn't follow that up with 'in the sack' I respond.

"I know. You tell me every time you drink. And frequently when you're sober."

"I'm gonna marry him," Christina nods vehemently. I glance around, but he's still scooping a massive serving of rice into a bowl. I smile at her, and Christina asks, "Do you think you'll marry Four? It would be so cuuuuute! You'll have little babies and you can name the first one Ten. Haha, Four and Six make Ten."

Four has just led the transfers into the room. He waves, but he sits down with his initiates. They all stare wide-eyed at the Dauntless compound and the Dauntless themselves. Will arrives with the rice, a pile of chicken wings, and a bottle of the nasty brown sauce that Christina likes on rice.

"You are sooo sweet!" Christina trills.

I pat her on the head as I stand up, "Are you okay with her?" Will nods and scarfs down a wing. I am amazed he doesn't eat the bone by accident.

I grab myself a plate of grilled cheese and broccoli on my way to Four. He looks up as I arrive and he introduces me to the transfers, "This is Six."

Immediately a Candor boy with dark skin and hair calls out, "What's with all the number names here?"

Tobias and I exchange a look, "Should we tell them?" I joke.

"Nah, let them be confused for a while. It won't hurt them."

"You'll find out soon enough," I tell the Candor boy. I swing my leg over the bench and join them. Kylie is seated across from me. "First jumper," I nod at her.

The Candor boy jumps in again, "What faction did you come from?"

Kylie runs her hand through her short, black hair. "Eurdite."

"You're wearing black and grey," points out the only Amity transfer, a short boy with a shaggy mop of blonde hair.

"I know," Kylie sighs, "but I was never going to stay in Eurdite, I've known that for years, so I figured I might as well dress like it." The blue bracelet that was on her arm has already disappeared.

The Candor boy is about to ask more questions when I turn to him, "What's your name?"

He stops short of whatever he was going to say and answers, "Dave."

"Dave," I say affecting the scary instructor voice that Four used when I was a transfer, "no one likes a Candor smart-mouth here. And the rest of you would do well to remember that Dauntless is your faction now, the past doesn't matter."

Four puts his arm around my waist and we finish lunch quickly and quietly. Max enters the room with Eric and Melissa, another of the Dauntless leaders. He gestures to us, and Lauren to join them. He speaks quickly, never one to waste time, "We have an unexpected large pool of initiates this year, so we will be keeping twelve of them instead of ten."

Lauren grins, and Four relaxes slightly. I haven't counted the initiates, but I know from some of the meetings that I've been in that this change is probably motivated more by the dwindling size of Dauntless than by the size of the initiate pool. All of the factions are growing except Dauntless and Abnegation. "Okay," I tell him. He doesn't like me much, even though we've been working together for a year now. I doubt he would have agreed to let me work with the leadership at all if I hadn't been ranked number one by a mile.

He nods and that concludes our little meeting. The Dauntless aren't big on pleasantries. I sigh, "time to scare some initiates."

I lead them to the dorm where Edward got stabbed. All the blood is gone, and the Stiff that was painted on my old bedframe has been scrubbed off, but it still holds bad memories for me. I turn to face them and give them roughly the same speech that Eric gave last year. They all seem to balk when they hear they might get cut, except Kylie. She doesn't even look surprised.


	2. Stage One

"The first thing you will learn to do is shoot a gun, and the second is how to win a fight." My initiates are bleary-eyed and dazed looking. I thought Tris would sleep in this morning, but we were both up nearly an hour ago. Early rising is an Abnegation habit neither of us has left behind. She went to check on Christina and her hangover when I left for training. The transfers are mostly Eurdite and Candor again with an Amity and no Abnegation. Tris' favorite, the Eurdite girl has already acquired a piercing in both ears, but she can barely open her eyes.

"Wake up!" I shout. They jump, but slump right back into their semi-comatose state. Irritation rises up in me. I grab a gun off the table, load it quickly and whip around. I fire five rounds into a target without pausing, and I finally have their attention.

It takes hours, but eventually they all at least hit the target.

"Go to lunch," I tell them. "We'll start on fighting after."

Tris slips into the room as the initiates file out. She hands me a container full of fries and a hamburger, and holds up one of her own. "I thought we could have lunch together," she announces.

"Sounds like a plan," Before I can take a bite, she leans in and kisses me. Her hands find my waist and in a few moments, lunch is the farthest thing from my mind.

"We need to talk," she murmurs. "Max and Eric are on the hunt for Divergents again."

"Of course they are," I sigh. Last year, they told me to be on the lookout for suspicious activity in stage two. They left it at that though, I guess because they think I don't know about Divergence.

Tris is biting her lip, "You need to make sure no one ends up dead this year, and I'm going to see what I can do to find out why they want to kill us." She is nearly whispering, but she looks more determined than scared.

I can feel myself frowning, "Tris don't going drawing attention to yourself. They'll try to hurt you too, if they find out." She gives me a glare.

"Four, I'm not okay with letting them hunt down innocent initiates. We need to find out what's happening." I wrap her in my arms as worry takes hold of me.

"Okay," I'm whispering too, "We will."

After we eat, Tris stays to watch the transfers learn to fight. Dave the Candor is huge and so muscled that when he hits the sandbag it swings likes it may as well be made out of paper. The kid from Amity looks as if he feels sorry for the bag, but Tris helps him and soon enough he seems to get it. I make a mental note not to pair them against each other until the Amity improves. Kylie, who I expected to defy faction stereotypes, is practically as vicious as Eric. She hits her bag fast and hard, landing two or sometimes three punches in the time it takes Dave to land one.

xxxxx

I collapse on our sofa at the end of the day and Tris straddles my legs. "What do you think of them?" I have eleven transfers to train this year: five from Eurdite, six from Candor, and the one Amity. By the end of the day I managed to get all of their names memorized.

"They have no idea what they've gotten themselves into, but they're brave so I guess we'll have to wait and see." She nods, and we talk for a while. Tris helps me plan out the fights for tomorrow.

"Are you staying here tonight?" I ask hours later even though the answer is almost always yes. When her class picked apartments she and Christina got one together, but Tris stays at my place nearly every night. At first Christina pouted that I was keeping Tris all to myself, but she seemed to get over when she started to use Tris' room as an extra closet. Plus, Will is a pretty big fan of the arrangement.

"Yeah," she replies. "Are you so eager to go to bed?" Her eyebrows wiggle and I laugh. I pick her up and her legs wrap around my waist. We nearly fall into the bed and I feel so light and happy that it blocks out everything else.

xxxxx

For the first fight, I put Teo, the Amity, against Parker a tiny girl from Eurdite. She's not a strong fighter, but yesterday she was the first to hit the bullseye, so her rank is slightly higher than his. This is a new strategy for stage one, Tris suggested it. Instead of starting with the best fighters, I'm starting with the lower ranked ones. Parker beats Teo quickly; yesterday he seemed unwilling to throw a punch, but today he was totally unable.

The rest of the day passes quickly, and by six o' clock the first round of first round of fight is over. Eric and Tris are splitting the responsibility of overseeing training this year, so he stopped in to watch one of the fights, Dave vs. Kylie. Dave has six inches and nearly fifty pounds on her, but Kylie won. I don't think Dave even landed a punch on her, she was so quick to dodge his fists and so intense in her attacks.

I am about to head to the control room, when Kylie grabs my arm.

"I am looking for someone," she says. Despite her tall stature and short hair, she reminds me of Tris with her fierce determination. "Her name is Beatrice Prior." I feel my jaw go slack. It takes a lot to catch me off my guard, but this girl certainly has.

"Um," I hear myself say. "I guess I'll take you to her." Kylie nods and we set out for the cafeteria. Tris is sitting at a table with some of our friends, laughing at something Uriah just said. If I wasn't consumed with wondering why this strange initiate was looking for her, I might feel some jealousy.

I lean down and kiss Tris on the cheek. Marlene has her arm around Uriah's shoulders and she laughs, "Hey now, what's with all the public displays of affection?" I ignore her while Christina and Lynn giggle.

"I have some one here who wants to meet you," I murmur to Tris. "This is Kylie."

"I know," Tris replies. She stands up and extends a hand. It still doesn't look natural, but in the last year she's gotten less tense about the greeting.

"I thought your name was Six?" Kylie seems confused. She stares at the tattoos on Tris' collarbone, and finally collects herself. "I know your brother. I really need to speak to you. Privately."


	3. What Kylie Knows

"Follow me," I turn on my heel. Whatever this girl wants from me, it has to do with Caleb. Caleb, who I haven't seen in a year since we argued in the park. As we walk away, I gesture to Tobias. I lead Kylie toward his apartment as he follows.

I open the door and stand aside. "Sit down," I don't mean to order her around, but the thought of my brother has part of me leaping with hope and another part boiling with anger. "And start by telling me how you know my brother."

"We used to date," is the first thing out of her mouth. I glance at Tobias who looks as confused as I feel. She continues quickly, "He was studying the simulation serums, but he didn't end there. Jeannie got interested in him and asked him to start working on new serums."

She hesitates there. "They're trying to overcome Divergence. I don't know what that means exactly but I know that…"

Another hesitation, "people will die over this. If the new serum doesn't work, they're going to switch to poison."

Fear creeps up my spine, icy cold and paralyzing. Kylie looks relieved, like she's glad to have gotten that off her chest. Tobias's mouth is pressed into a flat line, and he's paler than I've ever seen. He speaks and his voice sounds tight and tense, like he's trying to yell, "You cannot speak to anyone outside of this room about this. Tell no one."

My hands are shaking, "Are you sure?" My voice is weak, and the anger that threatened to boil over minutes ago has been replaced with dread. She nods. My mind is spinning. Jeannine killing Divergents isn't news, but Caleb can't be working with her. He can't.

"Very. I saw it with my own eyes. He takes a _lot _of notes," Kylie tugs at the silver bar in one of her ears. I can't think.

"Thank you for telling us this," Four interrupts.

"I thought I could trust her," her eyes get a crafty kind of look in them. "He seemed to know that she wouldn't approve, and I heard through one of Jeannine's lackeys that she is a Dauntless leader-in-training. Maybe there's something that we could do to stop it… them."

Tobias is wearing his instructor face, and Kylie seems to be running out of things to say. The Divergent have been dying in Dauntless for a long time, this much Tobias has told me when we found enough privacy to talk about this stuff. If Jeannine is changing her strategy, she probably intends to kill more of us.

"I need to think." It's basically the only thing I sentence I can utter.

XXXXXX

Last year right after the Choosing Ceremony, I found the first thing I loved about Dauntless life. The pounding of feet on pavement and the burn of my lungs was something I had never felt in my old life. Then I was winded after a minute, but a year of practice has strengthened my lungs and quickened my steps.

I run now. Tobias is a few feet to my right, and we're at least a mile away from headquarters when I start to slow down. He notices and adjusts his stride. Normally I don't bring him on runs, because no matter how fast I've gotten I would need to grow another foot to match one of his steps; tonight; though, he kept pace with me.

We pull up short next to an ancient brick building. Half of the windows are missing, but the other half is caked in grime so thick that they might as well be brick too. Tobias pulls me into the buildings shadow and pulls me around to face him. "They've been killing Divergents for a long time. Especially in Dauntless. We don't have any way to stop them without order from on high. The leaders are the only people who can do anything, and they're all in Jeannine's pocket."

I frown. I know all of this. We've talked about it a few times, but the constant surveillance by security cameras and a highly suspicious Eric make it risky.

"I think we need to focus on why they're doing this. Jeannine is Eurdite, she has to have a logical plan. Where do we fit in, and why are our brains a threat to her?"

Tobias frowns, "Who knows? Tris, we have almost no information."

"Okay, so we focus on what we know. Jeannine has been killing Divergent. Max and Eric and," here my throat constricts, "Caleb have all been helping her." I reach up and trace the third bird on my collarbone. Can Caleb really be okay with killing people? A thought occurs to me: Does he know that I am one of the people he's helping to kill?

Tobias continues where I left off, "We know that being Divergent means being aware of simulations and resistant to serums. That means Jeannine can't control us."

I pull my thoughts away from Caleb. "She thinks we're dangerous because we can't be controlled and she's convinced the Dauntless leaders that they should fear us too. What does she think that we're going to do?" I shake my head.

"I have no idea," Tobias is wearing his hardened look. "Either way, in less than two weeks Max and Eric are going to be pouring over every second of simulation footage from the initiates. We have to make sure that they don't find anything. Before they had to make the deaths look like accidents, but if the new plan is poison they might be more willing to kill first and cover-up later."

"So we're going to need some help," I press my lips together. This won't go over well.

To my surprise, Tobias nods. "We'll start with Uriah."

"What?" I say blankly. Uriah is nice, but I didn't think he'd be the first person Tobias wanted to trust with our Divergent secret. Unless… "Is he…" I let my question trail off in the wind. Tobias nods again.

"Oh. Okay, and Lauren too. She isn't Divergent, I don't think, but she has to know about it. She has to protect the Dauntless-born."

"We'll need to get them out of the compound to talk," he says with strain in his voice.


End file.
